# Michał Dworczyk

Michał Paweł Dworczyk (born 22 July 1975) is a Polish politician. Dworczyk worked as an adviser for Eastern European and Polonia affairs for Prime Ministers Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz and Jarosław Kaczyński between 2005 and 2007, and later served as an adviser to President Lech Kaczyński from 2009 to 2010. In the 2015 parliamentary election, Dworczyk was elected to the Sejm as a member of the Law and Justice party.
Between March and December 2017, Dworczyk served Deputy Minister of National Defence.
In December 2017, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appointed Dworczyk as the Chief of the Chancellery.
Elected as a Member of the European Parliament in 2024.

## Youth and education

He comes from a family with patriotic traditions. Both of his grandfathers - Rotmistrz Kazimierz Lenartowicz and Captain Doctor Marian Dworczyk - were participants in the Polish-Bolshevik war, his father Jan Dworczyk was a scout of the Grey Ranks pseud. ‘Michał’, while his mother Alina Lenartowicz-Dworczyk was a member of “Solidarność”.
In 1994 he graduated from the Social Secondary School No. 17 in Warsaw, and between 1994 and 2000 he studied at the Historical Institute of the University of Warsaw, graduating in 2001. He also did specialist eastern studies at the Study of Eastern Europe of the University of Warsaw. After graduation, he volunteered for military service. He received three months' training at the Reserve Cadet School in Zegrze and then served in the reconnaissance company of the Warsaw Armoured Brigade. He is a senior reserve cadet corporal.

## Scouting and activities in non-governmental organisations

In 1985 he joined the Scouts. In 1989 the Hawrań Wielki group, to which Michał Dworczyk belonged, joined the formation of the independent Scouting Association of the Republic of Poland. Michał Dworczyk was successively a deputy, a squad leader, a group commander and a troop leader. On his initiative, Hufiec Centrum was named after the Defenders of the Eastern Borderlands. In the years 2001-2006 he was the head of the Headquarters of the Scout Organisation, the head of the East Referral and a member of the ZHR Supreme Council. During his studies, as an instructor (in the rank of scout master), chief of the Headquarters of the OH ZHR and head of the Eastern Referat, he engaged scouts in helping the Kresy, organising camps, training for Polish instructors from the Kresy and the ‘Paczka’ Action - Helping Poles in the Kresy. In the years 2003-2005, as a member of the ZHR Supreme Council, he was responsible for assistance and cooperation of the ZHR with Polish scout communities and organisations abroad - in particular in Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Since the mid-1990s, he has been active in the ‘Polish Community’ Association - in the years 2000-2006 he was Vice-President of the Warsaw Branch Board and a member of the National Council, in 2008 he sat on the National Board of this organisation. He was also active in the Society of Lovers of Lviv and South-Eastern Borderlands. In 2005, together with Stanisław Kostrzewski, he founded and became a member of the Programme Council of the ‘Freedom and Democracy’ Foundation with the aim of assisting Poles in Belarus, cultivating the memory of Polish history and heritage, and supporting the activities of pro-democratic organisations in the territories of the former USSR, and he later became president of this organisation.

## Professional and political activities

Between 2001 and 2005, he was self-employed - he was co-owner of the travel agency ‘Pogranicze’. In 2001, he joined the Alliance of the Right (Przymierze Prawicy), and in 2002 he became a member of the Law and Justice party (PiS). In the 2006 local elections, he became a councillor of the Warsaw-Śródmieście district. In 2007 and 2011, he stood as a candidate in the elections to the Sejm in the Warsaw district, but did not obtain a seat. In 2010, he was elected to the Warsaw City Council. Between 2012 and 2015, he worked at PKO BP. In 2014, he obtained a mandate to the Council of the Mazovian Voivodeship Assembly of the 5th term. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland.
Between 2005 and 2007, he served as Chief Advisor to the Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. He was deputy chairman of the Interdepartmental Team for Supporting Democratic Transition in Central and Eastern Europe, secretary of the Interdepartmental Team for Polonia and Poles Abroad. He coordinated the work on the so-called package of laws for the Polish community. Among them were: a new law on repatriation, a law on citizenship, and a law on electoral regulations (providing for the election of parliamentarians representing Poles living abroad). Co-author of the law ‘On the Card of the Pole’, passed in autumn 2007. Co-author and editor of the governmental report ‘The Policy of the Polish State towards Polonia and Poles Abroad’, initiator and co-author of the governmental ‘Programme of Cooperation with Poles and Poles Abroad’ adopted by the Council of Ministers in 2007. Co-author of the Konstanty Kalinowski Scholarship Programme and the intergovernmental agreement establishing the Polish-Lithuanian Youth Exchange Fund.
In 2008-2010, he was an advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński for Polonia and Poles Abroad, dealing, among other things, with the policy of decorating Poles in the former Kresy and supporting Polish communities in the East.
21 November 2019 ceremony for the handing over of acts of appointment and entrustment of duties to members of the management of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister.
Between 2010 and 2015, he worked with Jarosław Kaczyński. These activities focused on the support and work of Law and Justice (PiS) with Polish communities in the Borderlands.
In August 2015, a few months before the end of the 7th term of the Sejm, he replaced MP Adam Kwiatkowski, who was appointed as an advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland. In October, he was elected to the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, running from the PiS electoral list in the Wałbrzych constituency.
Michał Dworczyk is the author of:
* an act on the establishment of the Eastern Cross,
* a parliamentary resolution on the establishment of 11 July as the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide Committed by the OUN-UPA on Polish Citizens of the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic.
On 1 March 2017, he became Secretary of State at the Ministry of National Defence. His responsibilities included shaping the educational process in the Polish Armed Forces, the historical policy of the Ministry of Defence, cooperation with pro-defence and non-governmental organisations to support the process of building the Territorial Defence Forces.
On 19 December 2017, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki appointed him as Head of the Prime Minister's Office with the rank of Secretary of State at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister. On 4 June 2019, he was appointed as Minister-Minister of the Council of Ministers.
On 12 June 2019, appointed Plenipotentiary of Law and Justice in the Wałbrzych district. He took over the duties of Chairman of the Lower Silesian Regional Council from Minister Adam Lipiński on 29 November 2019.
In the 2019 elections, he successfully ran for parliamentary re-election, receiving 58,426 votes. On 15 November 2019, he again became minister without portfolio, joining Mateusz Morawiecki's second cabinet.
By Cabinet decree of 8 December 2020, he was appointed Government Plenipotentiary for the National Immunization Programme against SARS-CoV-2 Virus. On 15 May 2022, due to the introduction of an epidemic emergency, he was removed from this position with effect from 16 May 2022.
On 13 October 2022, he was removed from his position as Head of the Prime Minister's Office, remaining as a member minister. In 2023, he was re-elected to the Sejm, receiving 40,264 votes. On 27 November of the same year, he left office as a minister.
In the elections to the European Parliament in 2024, he won a seat as an MEP for the 10th term with the support of 123,908 voters (10.82%). He sits on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence.

## Private life

In 2002 he married Agnieszka, whom he met in the scouts. Together they are raising four children: Maria, Zofia, Antoni and Jan.

## Honours

* Pro Patria medal (2016).
* Order ‘For merits’ 2nd class (Ukraine, 2022).
* Honorary citizenship of Bystrzyca Kłodzka (2020).
* Honorary citizenship of Kamieniec Ząbkowicki (2021).
* Distinguished citizen of Jaworzyna Śląska municipality (2022).
* Honorary citizenship of Bard (2023).

## Controversy

In the 1990s, he was sentenced by a court for illegal possession of World War II ammunition (he stored artillery shells in the basement of a nine-storey apartment block) to 1.5 years' imprisonment with a suspended sentence of three years.
In May 2021, the Supreme Chamber of Control filed a notice to the prosecutor's office on the possibility of an offence of abuse of power by Minister Michał Dworczyk in connection with preparations for the 2020 presidential elections.
In 2021, the portal Onet.pl and the weekly magazine Newsweek described the controversy surrounding government subsidies given to the Freedom and Democracy Foundation founded by Michał Dworczyk.
In June 2021, anonymous channels on the Telegram platform began publishing email lists originating from Michal Dworczyk's private email box, which was used for the minister's business and party purposes. As a result of pressure from the Polish government, Telegram removed the channels[35], but new emails signed by Dworczyk continued to find their way online. By the nature of the letters appearing on the platform, the incident was dubbed an email scandal by the media. On 30 July 2021, the journalist of the Wirtualna Polska web portal Szymon Jadczak published an article on the web service ‘Poufna Rozmowa’ where the first emails from Michał Dworczyk's mailbox in the email affair appeared on their profile in the Telegram instant messaging service, in which he says that the people behind the channel are Russian speakers and in the article, the former head of the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) in 2014-2015 Piotr Pytel states that there are many indications that Russian military services are behind the operation.